


the puppet knight

by fannishcodex



Category: Kipo and the Age of Wonderbeasts (Cartoon)
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Animal Abuse, Eventual Happy Ending, Gen, Harm to Animals, Harm to Children, Harm to Sentient Animal/Mute Children, Heavy Angst, Hugo/Scarlemagne will be okay eventually, Implied/Referenced Torture, Nightmare Fuel, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Past Torture, Psychological Horror, Slow To Update, Talking Animals, Unethical Experimentation, Warning: Dr. Emilia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-01
Updated: 2020-11-01
Packaged: 2021-03-09 01:49:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,657
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27316537
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fannishcodex/pseuds/fannishcodex
Summary: AU. Instead of finding the Goth Apes, Lio, and a baby Kipo, Hugo runs into Dr. Emilia instead.
Comments: 3
Kudos: 27





	the puppet knight

**Author's Note:**

> Something I had to get out of my head and start writing. Pretty much had this one part done before season 3, and thought I’d try to save it for Halloween. Now I’m ignoring season 3, and going ahead with posting this for Halloween.

Hugo ran from the monstrously huge mega bunny until his stomach clenched and rumbled. He needed to find food. Heart still pounding, he finally glanced back. Fortunately, the mega was out of sight. Unfortunately, he was still utterly lost and alone.

The young mandrill’s jaw clenched as he remembered the star paper he left behind and the mural of the happy family. Then he shook his head, as if he could shake the image away.

Still, his heart felt heavy again as he foraged for something to eat. Hugo remembered searching for his parents and the baby; he’d even found the hole that had been ripped into their burrow. But all he had found was debris from the collapse, locked doors he couldn’t open or break down, and multiple broken bodies strewn about. Several more could’ve been buried under the rubble without a trace. The mega mute monkey that had destroyed the burrow could’ve devoured many of the humans too. And then there was the orange goop that had started eating the bodies, something that had finally made Hugo flee and give up. Lio and Song couldn’t have survived; they were dead, along with the baby....

Hugo paused his digging, took a shaky breath, then resumed pulling out the roots of some plants hugging the side of a ruined building. He also forced out some small beetles and worms. The mandrill hungrily ate them up.

He searched the inside of the ruined building for any more food, and for water. It was pretty barren of anything edible or useful, so he left and kept looking. His appetite was sated enough, though he wouldn’t mind finding more food. But his thirst remained.

Hugo stiffened, hearing something—

The mandrill glanced around, but found nothing. Still he remained wary and picked up the pace while he searched for water.

He climbed up an old billboard covered in vines and giant flower buds, seeking a better view of his surroundings and a faster way to spot any bodies of water.

He looked around, and saw what looked like a pond some distance away. Seconds later, the vines flexed and the flower buds opened wide, revealing rows of fangs. Hugo jumped down as fast as he could, narrowly avoiding the plant biting down on him.

Heart pounding, he fled in the direction of the pond.

Hours later, he reached it, and restrained himself from rushing to drink. Instead, the mandrill carefully approached. Last month he almost had his head chewed off by a three-eyed hippo when he drank from a river; after that, he was more cautious about drinking from any body of water. 

After creeping carefully forward on all fours, the mandrill slowly lowered his head toward the water. Once his snout brushed the surface, he quickly drank. His body tensed, prepared to dart away as soon as possible.

Though he wanted to keep going, he straightened up to check again, putting some distance between him and the pond as he did so. Satisfied that nothing dangerous approached, he returned to the water and lowered his head for another drink.

He repeated the process as needed. When Hugo was done, he retreated to sit in the shadow of a wrecked truck for a few minutes. 

After that, he climbed up another building to scan his surroundings again. Finding it not tall enough, he jumped to another building, then another, going from rooftop to rooftop. 

Finally from the top of a crumbling chimney he saw a promising line of tall trees. He’d try there for...something, at least a place to sleep for the night. He preferred sleeping in trees; some deep-seated instinct liked it, and he generally felt a little safer there, even if he’d almost got eaten up in one a couple of times—

Hugo screamed as he felt something slick wrap around his leg and try to pull him down the chimney.

Terrified, the mandrill struggled to get away. But whatever grabbed him was frighteningly strong and wouldn’t let go. Hugo hooked his remaining leg on the outside of the chimney, and placed his arms there too—he tried to use the chimney as extra support to keep the creature from yanking him down—his body felt like it was tearing—

Eyes darting around for something, anything, they finally fell upon some stone bricks that had crumbled off the chimney. Snatching one up, he used it to strike whatever held him—now that he was attacking it, he realized it was some kind of giant, ringed, wormy tail. The mandrill brought the brick down again and again until the thing started to loosen its grip. As soon as it did, Hugo yanked his leg up—it slipped free, and he tumbled backward off the chimney, and half a second later he was jumping off the roof to another building below.

He landed in a rooftop garden—and soon giant cockroaches burst out of the foliage, angrily hissing at him for disturbing them. With another panicked shout he scrambled away, this time down a rusted fire escape ladder.

After a few frantic seconds of rushing down, he heard an ominous metallic snap, and the whole ladder began to tilt and sway. Hugo jumped to the building across, and clung to an open window as the ladder fell and smashed to the ground with a deafening crash that made his eyes screw shut and his ears ring.

Heart pounding, Hugo forced his eyes open, and looked around, waiting for something dangerous to come investigate the noise, waiting for the next crisis.

When minutes crawled by and nothing more happened, Hugo’s heart didn’t stop pounding, but he climbed through the window and landed in an empty room. The mandrill carefully but quickly crossed it, looking for an exit. He found it, and it thankfully didn’t take long for him to get out of the building without any further incident.

Breathing harshly, the mandrill then started in the direction of the tree line he’d seen.

Night was approaching when he finally neared the trees, but the sight of them did little to lift Hugo’s mood. Now that he was almost there, the prospect of sleeping another night alone in a tree was discouraging....

Then again, he had always slept alone. Hugo remembered getting upset about that ever since he was really little; he even vaguely remembered feeling that before the formula forced him into Lio and Song’s world. For some reason he’d always wanted to curl up with someone while he slept the whole night. It was a need that was never met and still lingered.

Later after he joined Lio and Song’s world, he got some inkling of the reason behind that when they showed him an Old World picture book about baby animals going to sleep. The pastel pictures showed them all curled up close with their parents, leaving him with the impression they stayed like that the whole night. It was a novelty in his four-corner world. Hugo had always spent the most time looking at the gorilla family huddled in a tree together.

But his parents had never been allowed to stay overnight with him. That was against lab protocol.

The closest Hugo had come to something like that was when he finally begged his parents to stay the night, just once, and still they said they couldn’t; but they promised to stay until he fell asleep. They did, and it was nice, until a bad dream about needles sucking him dry and someone making him drink poison woke him up in the middle of the night, and he realized they were gone. Though he should’ve known better, though they had told him they would only stay until he fell asleep, Hugo had still felt terribly disappointed and even more alone.

These days, Hugo sometimes wished he could go back to that. At least Lio and Song were still mostly around then, at least they were alive—now, his parents and the baby were dead, and Hugo had nothing but what seemed like endless miles of desolate land and countless dangers.

Emilia wanted to take away intelligence from mutes? The thought made him want to break into hysterical laughter. He hadn’t seen any mutes who could talk since he’d been thrown onto the surface, all he had encountered were creatures that could devour him or crush him without a single thought; sometimes it felt like he was the only one left in the world....

_Get a grip_ , Hugo inwardly snarled at himself. Shaking his head with a frown, the mandrill took another step toward the trees. Then he heard noise coming from behind.

The mandrill darted to the side and into an abandoned cafe. He hid behind a window booth, listening for when it was safe to move further away.

“...cannot believe you, Zane.”

Hugo’s eyes snapped wide with horror and his insides shriveled up. It wasn’t just the name, but the voice that said it with such disdain.

“It was Greta’s fault!”

“You both screwed up,” Emilia snarled, and Hugo squeezed his eyes shut, hoping she would leave soon, hoping the monstrously huge mega mute monkey she controlled with his harvested pheromones wasn’t around. “How could you two lose Song, you know she’s an asset—”

The mandrill’s heart jumped into his throat, and his eyes immediately watered. _Song_ —if Greta and Zane had lost her, she was alive—and Lio, and the baby—maybe they were okay too—

“Look, we’ll find her—”

Hugo leaned forward, trying to hear better, hanging off every word—

Something strong wrapped tight around his scrawny arms and lifted him up. 

The mandrill clenched his jaws tight, trying not to scream and alert Emilia and Zane. He had to get away without making too much noise, then try to find them again; or better yet, try to find Song, it sounded like Zane and Greta had lost her recently, so maybe she hadn’t gotten too far—

“Emilia, I got him!” 

Hugo’s eyes snapped open. It wasn’t a random predator that had grabbed him.

Now he just shouted and screamed, struggling madly to get away, kicking and trying to twist around to bite Greta, trying to get his pheromones on her with all of Lio’s admonishments flying out the window. He knew he was sweating, fear and his desperate effort to escape was wringing the sweat out of him. But Greta wasn’t letting go no matter what he told her, so clearly he wasn’t getting any of his pheromones on her—

“Greta, his snout!” Zane hissed.

“Oh, right!” When she tried to grab it, Hugo snapped his jaws at her. His eyes widened in alarm when he realized her hand was gloved, her sleeves were rolled all the way down, and she wore a cloak and gas mask with moth-like feathers. Emilia had run tests to confirm that his pheromones needed physical contact to work. His new cage had been assembled with a slot to slip food and drink through to reduce the risk of physical touch. Then she and her assistants would all cover up with protective equipment whenever they had to get close to him for a blood sample or for some other reason, but he was always too tired to try resisting anyway.

Also too afraid. Emilia had warned him there would be consequences if he made any attempt to use his pheromones against them, and not only for him, but for Lio and Song as well, and of course the baby. His only hope had been to wait for Lio and Song, they would come get him when the baby was born.

(A baby sister. Before everything had gone even more wrong with the mega’s attack, Lio had told him the baby was a girl, that he’d have a baby sister. It was news that had comforted him after another torturous day of running for Emilia’s harvest.)

“For the love of—” Emilia grumbled, and Hugo finally got a good look at her. She wore a bird-like mask and was covered in a cloak too. She pulled out a crowbar with gloved hands.

He snarled at her in fear and anger, then his eyes widened too late as she became a sudden blur—

The mandrill’s head snapped brutally to the side, blood filled his mouth, and his skull burned. That was worse than any strike he’d received from an angry Zane back at the burrow labs.

Though everything was now a pain-filled blur, Hugo felt Greta’s hand roughly wrap around his snout before he could resist any further. But finding the will to muddle through the pain, he struggled again, hoping to break the human’s grip on his arms and torso now that only one arm wrapped tight around them. But her hold remained firm.

Greta had always looked so tall and strong and frightening. Whenever she restrained him for a shot or blood sample or another lab procedure back at the burrow, Hugo could never make her grip any less tight. And despite all Hugo had endured on the treadmill and the surface, he was still so weak against Emilia and her people, helpless, useless....

“Wow Emilia, I can’t believe that worked!” Greta said, her voice beaming as she held a terrified and struggling Hugo. His eyes watered again, and his jaw trembled from within Greta’s iron hold. He hated her, he hated all of them—he had to get away—he had to find his mother—he had to find his family—

“I told you it would be easier to lure him in,” Emilia said, looking down at him. “We just had to convince him we had some information on Lio or Song.”

Feeling everything drain out of him, Hugo froze and stared at Emilia in horrified disbelief. His watering eyes finally spilled over in tears, and he started to hyperventilate. 

_No, no, that can’t—they couldn’t have—_

Zane scoffed. “Stupid monkey.”

Hugo started to struggle again with renewed desperation flooding his body. His mind started to futilely cry out for his parents, begging them to finally come save him, they had promised they would come for him, they had _promised_ —

Emilia held out her hand to Zane. Hugo now realized he was also masked and cloaked and gloved. The assistant passed her a small scrap of cloth and a bottle. She poured some of the bottle’s contents out on the rag, and Hugo’s snout flared in disgust at the strong scent.

“All right Greta, you can let go—”

When she did, Hugo should’ve tried biting again. But he desperately burst out, “Where’s Song? Where’s Lio? Where’s the baby? Where’s—?”

Emilia’s voice held a twistedly breezy tone. “No idea, I haven’t seen any of them.”

Hugo shook his head. He couldn’t believe this, he didn’t want to. “No, _no_ , you can’t have—you can’t have just been _lying_ —!”

“I was. Like I said, I just had to convince you I had some lead on them.”

The mandrill swore at her, using a word he’d heard Zane snap and forgetting that his parents had forbidden him from repeating it. Panicked and furious, Hugo tried to bite Emilia, even though she was too far away. An obviously futile effort, especially when she struck him with the crowbar again and made his head spin once more. He tasted more blood.

Then the damp cloth covered his snout and a horrible stench blasted inside. His shouts and cries were muffled, and he tried twisting his head away, but Emilia kept the rag firmly closed around his snout, and Greta’s hold remained tight.

Finally his mad struggling started to lessen, and his cries grew weaker. With another jolt of terror, he realized this was like one of those sedatives back in the burrow labs. 

_No,_ **_no_ ** — **_please_ ** — _Lio_ — _Song_ —

Hugo’s vision blurred, making Emilia’s shape horribly warp.

_Father_ — _Mother_ — _help me,_ **_please_ ** _, help me,_ **_help, HELP_ **—

Finally Hugo slumped down in Greta’s hold, losing consciousness.

**Author's Note:**

> I tell myself I don’t like horror but then I do this. I’m drawn to fictional angst (as long as there's an eventual happy/recovering/better ending), and maybe that’s a sort of subgenre of horror.


End file.
